


A Day Off

by CarolinaNadeau



Series: The Music Man: The Happily-Ever-After [15]
Category: The Music Man (1962), The Music Man - All Media Types, The Music Man - Willson
Genre: Bathtub Canoodling, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Fluff with depth, Heavy Petting, Intimacy, Marian in lingerie, Marian wearing Harold's clothes, Outdoor Mischief, Parlor passion, Passion vs Propriety, Picnic, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sexual Politics, Trading Innuendos, Wall Sex, love bite, smexytimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-12 02:39:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarolinaNadeau/pseuds/CarolinaNadeau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harold and Marian spend an afternoon in the countryside to relax and escape the pressures of everyday life – although not everything goes quite as planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Freedom

**Author's Note:**

> I guess that if I had any self-confidence, I'd stop apologizing profusely every single time I post a fanfic, but, well, I don't and I can't, haha. So I apologize for the fact that this has lots of words yet no real plot, and I hope you don't mind either, dear reader. It's better than writing nothing, right?... at least I hope it is! It seems I just have a tendency to write vignettes instead of actual stories when it comes to fanfic, but I have to take inspiration wherever I find it. ;)
> 
> (And, not for the first time, my story happens to have a couple themes in common with a far superior fanfic very recently posted by Marianne Greenleaf, but I promise that all this is completely coincidental and that I wrote this before I ever saw hers, and apologize. Again.)

"You know, Marian, you never did tell me yet why you were so insistent on coming here for a picnic today," Harold Hill asked. True, it was a sunny, perfect day in late May, the kind of day when anybody might long to spend some time outside to enjoy such ideal weather – but his wife's demeanor ever since she had first suggested this outing had indicated that she was most certainly keeping some kind of secret from him about her true intentions. While Marian had promised earlier that she would explain her sudden enthusiasm to him when the time was right, all his attempts to inquire so far had been unsuccessful and had left her rather flustered.

Like right now, for instance – his lovely librarian fidgeted self-consciously on the blanket where they were reclining after their lunch, her eyes not meeting his and darting around the secluded clearing that was several miles outside of River City. A hint of color crept into her alabaster cheeks as she spoke at last, further betraying her uncertainty. "Well, I just loved being here when we came with the Washburns last month, but the whole time we were there, I was thinking –" She shook her head abruptly with a nervous giggle. "It's ridiculous. Oh, it is truly ridiculous. I can't believe I really thought this would be a good idea."

"I won't think it's ridiculous," he protested. "Can't you trust your own dear husband not to judge you?"

She glanced sidelong at him, her eyes narrowing just slightly in suspicion. "Don't laugh at me," she ordered – just as she pulled the hem of her skirt up in order to unlace her boots, an action that baffled Harold so thoroughly that he almost laughed. Of course, he quickly deemed laughing to have been the single worst thing he could have done in that moment, and he swallowed his surprise, setting his features into an expression of what he hoped was earnest sincerity.

"I promise I won't," he said, pressing a hand to his heart – though he realized just after he said it that he didn't know for sure if he could keep that promise. After all, it wasn't as if laughter were a voluntary action. But Harold Hill, legitimate music professor, upstanding citizen and devoted husband, did not break his promises for anything, and this one would be no exception, no matter what he had to do.

As she pulled down her stockings and deposited them primly beside her on the blanket, humor was currently the last thing on his mind, anyway. If her plan involved removing clothing, he could find no motivation to stop her. "Whatever you're doing, I highly approve," he noted, letting his hands explore her smooth, bare ankles and slide up to her calves, and though she rolled her eyes amiably at his completely predictable actions, she made no word of protest. He wouldn't have minded kissing his way up those legs right then, Harold thought, and he was just seconds away from giving in and doing so when Marian deftly slipped out of his embrace and stood up, thwarting his plan.

She took a few barefoot steps in the soft grass, and as she turned on her heel to face him, her lovely face was glowing with unrestrained joy as well as the early afternoon sunlight. He couldn't feel too disappointed about the loss of intimate proximity when he was afforded the chance to see her gaze back at him with that radiant smile of hers (which he was almost certain went unrivalled in all the world for sheer beauty – it was really too bad that she dismissed as flattery all his attempts to inform her thus!)

Harold could tell by the tapping of her feet that Marian was waiting impatiently for him to ask her what she was doing, and he almost wanted to subvert her expectations and throw her a remark that would draw them into one of their delightful little bouts of repartee, but he was honestly too curious to hold off.

"Well, are you going to tell me now?"

Marian nodded slowly, idly clicking her nails together. "As I was saying, I had an idea about this place when we first picnicked here with the Washburns. As isolated as this little nook is, I thought it might be a safe place to take some time off from being a responsible and proper lady," she declared, blushing a little sheepishly despite all of her boldness. "And all I wanted to do when we first came here a few weeks ago was to – remember, you mustn't laugh at me – to wade barefoot in the stream!"

Harold leaned forward on his arms, unable to keep from grinning at this unexpected and charming development. "So, you wanted to go on a picnic with me today simply because you wanted to run around outdoors with your shoes off?"

With a huff, she rolled her eyes. "You're laughing!"

"Not _at_ you, darling. I'm only laughing because I find you utterly adorable." Already his fingers were unlacing his own shoes in a gesture of solidarity. "If I thought you ridiculous, I wouldn't be so eager to jump up and do the exact same thing, now, would I?"

"You would if you were ridiculous, too," she pointed out.

"Well, I think it's always been safe to say that I'm a lot more ridiculous than the sensible, responsible librarian." After hastily tossing his shoes and socks onto the blanket, as well as rolling his trousers up a few inches, the music professor jumped up to join her, relishing the feel of the grass beneath his own feet.

"Oh, all I ever am is responsible!" Marian laughed. "Sometimes I just need to let go and behave like a fool."

"Not a fool," he quickly corrected. "Something a lot lovelier than that." He considered her current stunningly gorgeous appearance – clad in pale pink, her golden tresses catching the sunlight, bare shapely legs and small feet surrounded by green spring grass – and searched for the appropriate fanciful title to ascribe to such a creature. "Maybe a fairy... yes, you'd make a perfect fairy."

Humoring him, she took a few light, twirling little steps, her skirt rippling around her legs. "All right, then, I'll see how it feels to be a fairy. I'd let my hair down if it wouldn't be next to impossible to restore it without a mirror... fairies probably don't wear their hair up," she mused. Pressing a hand to her upper abdomen, she added, "I don't know if it's possible to feel truly fairy-like while one is wearing a corset, either. But I'll try."

This time Marian let herself go even more, whirling around in her best approximation of a pirouette, and she laughed breathlessly as she stumbled sideways into Harold's arms. When she met his gaze again, her uncertainty was gone, her eyes flashing with mischief as she turned around and skipped toward the stream with long, unladylike strides, and it wasn't hard to believe that she might have been some sort of ethereal being. Harold had rather figured that he was well accustomed to every facet of his wife's being by now, but it was truly enchanting to see her so free and unrestrained, so impulsive, eager to embrace whatever life could give her – this, he felt, was the essence of the true Marian, this vivacious, passionate woman who was somehow as different from him as any person could be and yet exactly like him at the same time – and it was he, only he, who got to share in this lovely secret. Harold would have followed Marian anywhere that she led, especially when she did it with such boundless joy, and even the delight that he took from watching her from afar could not keep him from rushing to be by her side once again.

"It's cold!" he heard her gasp as her feet hit the water, and she quickly leapt up to sit on a nearby flat rock, swinging her legs so she could skim the surface of the stream with her toes but not submerge them entirely. "I think it might take me a few moments to adjust to the temperature. You might want to be a bit more careful, darling."

Wondering if perhaps Marian was being a little too delicate, Harold neglected to heed her warning and stepped into the water up to his ankles – within seconds he had scrambled up onto the rock with her, and, though he tried to look nonchalant about the whole thing, his wife still smirked at him.

"You didn't believe me, did you?"

"Not quite," he admitted. "But I believe I paid the price for my error in judgment."

"As you should," she teased – and then pressed her cold foot to the back of his calf, making him jump.

"What's gotten into you today?" he laughed, wriggling out of the path of her merciless pursuit.

"I feel like I've been waiting to do something like this for years! It feels like a weight off my shoulders to be so alone, so free – so far away from anybody who'll be scandalized if I take off my hat, or, well, my shoes. I don't know if there's anything more freeing than telling a woman that, even just for a little while, she doesn't have to be a proper lady."

The professor nodded, a little unsure of how to respond as he certainly did not have the experience to truly identify with what she was feeling. "Well, I can't say that I don't get sick and tired of having to be a gentleman all the time."

"Being a lady is _much_ harder than being a gentleman," Marian countered, much as he'd expected. "When you're a child, people already expect you to be more well-behaved because you're a girl – then one day out of nowhere it's skirts down, hair up, and suddenly every single thing you do from then on must be _perfect_. And it was only worse for me after the _rumors_ started, for the only form of protest I could make was to be as unremittingly proper in every aspect of my life as I could possibly manage. I'm not saying that I don't appreciate having a society with rules and order and whatnot, but – being a lady can be _exhausting_!"

Harold, who was now extremely familiar with the passion and vibrancy that infused every aspect of his lovely librarian's personality – but that could be so well hidden beneath a prim exterior – could imagine how she must have struggled. Certainly there were some things about being a gentleman that he found very difficult (although, truth be told, the most agonizing of those restrictions for him had ceased to be a problem just as soon as they'd gotten married!), but, on the whole, nobody was expecting a man to stifle his personality just to be a part of polite society. At most, society asked that a gentleman refrained from certain jokes and remarks while in mixed company, but a man among other men was generally free to express himself as he wished. And, while neither would be considered particularly proper behavior, he knew that there'd be a lot more outrage over a woman wishing to run barefoot in the creek than a man.

"And," she continued, "while being with you has certainly encouraged me to be much bolder about breaking convention from time to time, that does not change the fact that it has been years since I've just been able to run outdoors if I wanted to."

"Far be it for me to stop you," Harold assured her, pulling her close to him and pressing his lips to her cheek. "There is something about this weather that just makes a fellow want to forget all his responsibilities, isn't there? Perhaps adults do themselves a real disservice by declaring themselves too old to play."

"I suspect that you've never felt that way, though," she said slyly, her eyes twinkling with mirth. "I've seen the way you play with my brother, after all – you enjoy battling imaginary pirates and escaping from imaginary labyrinths just as much as he does! Really, Harold, sometimes I'm still not sure that I understand you – how at the same time, you can be my strong, rugged, masculine husband –"

At being described in such a way, Harold couldn't resist delivering a hard love bite to the nape of his wife's neck with a little groan of approval – and though she giggled and gasped, she was able to regain her composure enough to deliver the counterpoint to her previous statement.

"– and yet so very childish!"

Harold shrugged and leaned his chin against her shoulder. "I'd say that I'm an equal advocate for the enjoyment of all pleasant things, whether that should be good music, good lovemaking, good food, or the more childish pleasures of, say, playing catch, running barefoot in shallow water..."

"And that's a good part of the reason why I couldn't help but fall in love with you," she confessed with quiet honesty, her tone suddenly serious. "I think you showed all of the townspeople how it wouldn't hurt to enjoy themselves sometimes, but especially me. I'd forgotten what it felt like to dance, to laugh, to have fun."

"But you, my dear, taught me that life is the _most_ enjoyable when you have people that you really care about," Harold reminded her, unwilling as ever to allow her to give him all the credit for the happiness they'd found together. It was the sort of silly, lighthearted argument that they'd had a hundred times before, yet he could never help but engage in it; he didn't think he'd ever get over his disbelief that such a good-hearted, intelligent, beautiful woman had not only given her heart and her life to him so fully, but actually seemed to believe that he was as good as her or better. As hard as he tried and as much as he wanted to be the man that she believed him to be, Harold doubted that he would ever truly deserve something so precious and wonderful as Marian's love – it was, perhaps, his one true insecurity.

Seeming to know just where his mind was wandering to, the librarian gave him an encouraging smile and squeezed his hand tightly in her own. "There's no need to debate over which of us needed the other more, now. I've said it before, and I'll say it again – I think God must have made us especially for each other, knowing that neither one of us could do half as well on our own."

He'd never quite gotten over feeling a little uncomfortable whenever Marian brought God into their conversation – yet it still astonished him a little how quick he was to _agree_ with her when she said such things. Harold hadn't been much inclined to think about God during his con man days. After all, if there _were_ a God, He and Harold couldn't have been on very friendly terms, neither having ever done much for the other's benefit. But from the very night that Marian had confessed her unconditional love for him, the night when he realized that he'd finally met a woman that he couldn't and wouldn't live without, and, at the very same time, narrowly avoided a cruel and painful torture that could have easily resulted in his death, instead being inexplicably granted the opportunity to stay with his love forever, well, that seemed to him like the kind of miracle that could only have occurred through some sort of divine intervention. Maybe he wasn't half as steadfastly religious as Marian, maybe he couldn't quote the Bible and didn't see much of a point in attending Sunday sermons, but Harold truly believed that his dear little librarian's presence in his life was something God-given – whatever that might mean.

"That must be it, then," he answered truthfully, and he was gratified to see his wife beaming back at him. "How else could two people from such different lives chance to meet under such outrageous circumstances and make each other so happy? I have to think that it must have been God's way of getting the right someone with the right someone."

She nodded in earnest. "Oh, exactly! That's the perfect way to say it." Lowering her feet to the ground at last so she could stand up, only wincing briefly as the cold water rose up around her ankles, Marian tugged her husband's hand to invite him to join her. "Well, I thought you were eager to jump right into the water, weren't you? I think we're good and ready to go wading now."

Harold chuckled, shaking his head in disbelief. It was almost jarring how she'd segued from such intimate confessions to her earlier impetuous mood. "You can certainly change a subject fast, can't you?"

"Well, what we _were_ talking about, before things turned so very serious, were the merits of having fun. And today, I intend to have fun," she informed him, tapping on the end of his nose with her index finger.

The music professor raised a teasing eyebrow at her. "I'm sorry that my opening up my heart to you proved to be such an inconvenience, Madam Librarian! Shall I refrain in the future?"

"Oh, stop," she scolded, tapping his nose again for good measure. "There's nothing more important to me than when we can talk like this, _really_ talk. That's one thing that I've always wanted in a husband that hasn't changed a bit. But I'd like to have a chance to do more than just sit on this rock all day – before I lose my nerve and decide that I'm being ridiculous after all!"

Certainly not wanting her to reach that conclusion, Harold stepped into the stream as well. "All right, your wish is my command. Now, what do you have in mind, my lady?"

Pulling up her skirt gingerly with one hand, she took a few light, skipping steps through the water. "Oh, it's really nothing in particular. It's just... an experience I need to have, I guess." She stopped a few yards away and twisted her feet back and forth until she sank a little deeper into her own footprints. "I think I'd forgotten how sand feels beneath my feet, it's been so long! It's really very nice."

A certain thought occurred to Harold in that moment – it was not the first time that he'd had this thought, but he had never actually voiced it aloud before. "You've never seen the ocean, have you, dear?"

"No, of course not," Marian responded, a little wistful at the thought. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, I just thought that someday, I ought to take you to see it. It's not the kind of thing that any person should miss out on, especially not somebody with as great an appreciation for beauty as you have."

"Wanderlust, Professor?" she inquired, cocking her head with a knowing smile as she walked back toward him. "I should have known you'd be inclined to travel someday."

He supposed that perhaps she wasn't entirely wrong, but he'd certainly never thought of it that way. "Only if I can take you with me, though. It's not the traveling that's the important part – it's being with you that's most important in my life now, and I think that should include showing you new places as long as I have the means and opportunity to do so. And it's not that I desire to travel on anything more than a temporary basis. River City will always be our home, but that doesn't mean that we can't take a second honeymoon someday, or maybe a third, or a fourth – I intend to be married to you forever and ever, you know, so one honeymoon really doesn't do justice to such a marriage!"

She laughed at that, kicking at the water so little waves splashed against his legs. "If you think we'll find the time and money for it, then I won't protest such extravagance!" Then Marian looked right up at him, all teasing gone from her expression as she gazed at him with sincere love and gratitude shining in her eyes. "But I really would love to see the ocean, you know."

Harold knew that he was being more than a little grandiose and melodramatic, but he was suddenly desperate to let her know the extent of what he was willing to do for her, how much he wanted to give her. "I want you to have everything," he blurted gracelessly. "That's all I've ever wanted for you, ever since the moment that I finally realized I loved you. I don't know, I see how happy it makes you just to do this simple thing here today, and I want you to have _all_ of that, to have everything in the world that you'll ever want or need out of life."

"Oh, Harold, I already have everything as long as I have you." Marian appeared on the verge of bursting into tears, and for a moment he feared that he'd gone too far, that he'd once again brought too much seriousness into her lighthearted mood. But in spite of her welling eyes, she glowed tremulously. "I ask you for a picnic and you promise me the ocean – and yet you say that you're no white knight!" she marveled.

"Well, I need to have some redeeming qualities to make up for my lack of modesty, quietness, literary know-how, whatever else you hoped the man you'd love would be like..."

Marian was quick to dismiss his self-effacement with a wave of her hand, her playful mood already returning once again. "I prefer you greatly to my silly imaginary white knight, though. Now that I think about it, he was really a terrible bore."

In enthusiastic agreement, Harold scoffed derisively at the hypothetical man who could never pose him any competition even if he'd had the audacity to actually exist. "I'm sure. I'll bet you never dreamed up a day like this with him, did you?" As proof of how much more exciting he was, he splashed a little water on the librarian's legs, and she jumped back with a little giggle – before stepping right back up to him, standing on her tiptoes, and gazing defiantly into his eyes.

"Oh, I never dreamed up a _lot_ of things before I met you, Professor," she teased. "Certainly no other man but you could ever have made married life nearly as _enjoyable_ as you do..."

Startled but greatly pleased by her unexpectedly provocative reply to such an innocent question, Harold repaid her in the only way he could think of. Sliding his hands down to her backside, he fondled her there with an unabashed squeeze – and though he'd taken this liberty purely in jest, he couldn't help but grin as he reveled in the feel of her warm, familiar curves against his hands.

"Professor Hill!" Marian gasped, leaping back with a breathless giggle and teasingly swatting his hands away.

"I don't think you minded that much," he protested with a wag of his finger.

Her nose crinkled charmingly as a mischievous smile lit her gorgeous features. Hiking her skirt up around her knees, the librarian turned on her heel darted off through the water, tossing a challenging glance back over her shoulder at him. "Maybe if you can catch me, you'll find out!" she called.

And again she was the fairy, the nymph, the goddess that he'd seen her as earlier, ripples and splashes of water radiating out from her footfalls, golden tresses escaping from her chignon to fly out behind her, and Harold almost just wanted to stand still and observe his beautiful librarian in her utter, joyful abandon. But he knew there was a game being played here, and that Marian would be quite disappointed if he didn't join in with her; eventually, she'd stop running if she wasn't being chased. Anyway, she'd made it quite clear several times that what she wanted more than anything today was to kick up her heels and let loose, and no matter how many poetic and saccharine sentiments she brought into his mind, now was not the time to dwell on them. They were going to make today worth remembering.

Marian must have been aware of when he'd started moving, because she increased her pace with a girlish giggle and began to weave from side to side as if to thwart any attempts he might make to grab her. A few times, she looked back to judge how far away he was, both nervous and excited that she would be caught, and her face was charmingly flushed from her exertion. As he pursued her, Harold quickly made up his mind that the instant he caught up to her, he was going to sweep her up in his arms and kiss those pinkened cheeks – where that would lead, he wasn't entirely certain, but they could cross that bridge when they came to it – and he gave up holding back on her, taking longer strides to close the gap between them.

And then, all of a sudden, Harold could see her balance slipping.

As the librarian stumbled back, he seemed to see it play out in half time, and the only thought in his mind was that he needed to do anything he could to stop her from hitting the water. He rushed over as fast as his legs could carry him and caught her in his arms, and he could feel her lean into him gratefully for just a moment before the sudden dull pain of a rock beneath his bare foot sent him reeling, and the two of them fell in opposite directions – Marian on the safety of the shore, Harold sprawled gracelessly in the shallow water.

"Oh my goodness!" Marian cried in anguish, clapping a hand to her mouth. "Oh, Harold, I am so, so sorry."

Although he'd landed fairly hard, the music professor quickly judged that he'd hurt nothing but his pride, but before he could reassure his wife, she darted back into the water and reached out to help him up – although, sweet as her concern was, he couldn't help but notice that her assistance was doing more to drench the hem of her skirt and the cuffs of her blouse than to provide him with any needed help.

"Are you all right?" she asked as she took his hands, her hazel eyes wide with panic.

"I'm absolutely fine. Can't say the same for my clothes, though," he answered. " _Damn_ it," Harold grumbled under his breath as he stood up and felt the weight of the cold water soaking through all his layers of clothing to his skin, and for once his strait-laced wife did not look the least bit affected by his cursing; she looked as though she might have sworn herself, if she could have brought herself to do it. Instead, she simply bit her lip hard and pulled him onto dry land.

As soon as they were out of the water, she hastily pulled off his drenched suit coat and bowtie, although there was nothing that could be done about the rest of his clothes while still remaining reasonably decent. After shaking and wringing out a fair amount of the water – rendering her own clothing even more disheveled in the process – she laid them gingerly next to the picnic blanket, where she sat down beside them.

"Is it all right if I sit down, too?" Harold asked, vaguely amused at the speed and efficiency with which the librarian had taken control of the entire situation.

She gazed up at his still-dripping form, dismay showing clearly on her face, as if she'd just remembered that he was there and that her actions had not actually solved everything. "Of course!" she exclaimed, nearly throwing her arms around him as he joined her on the picnic blanket. Thinking better of it, she instead pulled the relatively dry handkerchief from the breast pocket of his coat and did her best to wipe the water from his face and neck.

"This is my fault, this is all my fault," Marian fretted as she patted down his damp curls, and Harold noted with alarm that her eyes were brimming with tears. He'd become quite accustomed to the librarian's sometimes wildly variable temperament – she was passionate in all her emotions, after all, not just the positive ones – but this seemed extreme even for her.

"Sweetheart, a little water isn't the end of the world. I'll be just fine. I'm just happy that it didn't happen to you – it's a lot harder for a woman's clothes to withstand such a dunk, I suspect!"

She shook her head vehemently, and when she spoke, her words were clipped and edged with bitterness. "But I shouldn't have been anywhere near that stream to begin with, and if I hadn't been, you wouldn't have been either. I guess there are reasons why a proper, responsible lady ought not convince her husband to go running barefoot in the water with her... reasons why a grown adult can't just act like a child whenever she wishes."

An unpleasant coldness sank into Harold's stomach that had nothing to do with the chill of his saturated clothes. Few things were more distressing to him than to see Marian retreat back into that guarded shell of rigid propriety, especially knowing how far she had come from that place, how happy she was to finally be free of it.

Clasping her hands in his own, Harold pleaded with her. "Really, Marian, it hurts me to hear you say that a lot more than it hurts me to end up a little wet. There's nothing that makes me happier than to see you so – so carefree and self-assured. I know how it hurt you to repress that side of yourself in the past, like you talked about earlier, and I don't want you thinking that you have to do that again."

"I wouldn't feel the need to if the implications were only for the two of us in private, but because of my foolish decision, you're going to have to be seen in public like this. I might have gone and ruined both our reputations."

"Nobody's reputation was ever ruined by a little water!" He realized that such a sweeping statement could not actually be proven, but it sounded plausible – and in their particular case, anyway, it would definitely be true. "Little accidents and mistakes are going to happen now and again, darling, especially when we choose to live in the moment and enjoy ourselves, but as long as nobody's hurt, there's no harm done."

The librarian shrugged listlessly. "At the very least, I guess I've ruined this afternoon for you. I suspect that I've gone and made today worth remembering for all the wrong reasons," she sighed.

Harold couldn't help but think her reaction was severely disproportionate – could she really think him so priggish as to regard a little blemish on an otherwise picturesque day as some kind of life-altering catastrophe? It seemed to him like she was confusing him with that terrible bore of a white knight again.

"I've had worse days, darling, and far worse encounters with water," he reminded her with a wry smile. "Did I ever tell you about the time I had to dive in a lake to get a farmer with a shotgun off my tail after he realized that his steam-powered tractor was never going to show up?"

" _No_ ," she gasped, grasping his hand tightly in sympathy. "Harold, that sounds just awful! You weren't hurt, were you?"

For a moment Harold regretted that he'd said anything about it, as the last thing he'd wanted was to distress her even further. But he couldn't just dismiss the subject now – it seemed unconscionable to blindly accept such sweet compassion for a misfortune in which he'd unquestionably been the villain. "No, I got away all right – I was well accustomed to running and hiding by any method possible in those days. But it's not like I didn't deserve it –"

"Not to be _shot_!" she insisted, her voice wavering with her indignation.

He grimaced as he considered that. "Maybe not for that specific crime, but for the sum of all of them, I'd say I had it coming."

"Please don't talk like that, _please_ ," she begged, almost hurting him with how hard she was gripping his hand. "I just can't stand to hear it – we both know that you've changed now. There's nothing to be gained from dwelling on things that are over and done with."

"Oh, no, darling, please don't cry." Harold hurried to embrace her, kissing her cheeks and lightly tracing her wedding and engagement rings with his thumb to remind her of the life that they now shared. He chastised himself for being so foolish as to express such sentiments aloud – if it had pained him to hear Marian contemplate the merits of a puritanical ban on enjoyment, how the hell did he think it wouldn't hurt _her_ to hear her husband contemplating the merits of his own murder? "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to go down such an unpleasant avenue as that. I suppose it's easy to say these things about myself, but I always forget how it must sound to you. At the time it was something truly horrifying, that's for sure, but I can almost laugh about it now because it was so long ago – you, of course, are just hearing this now. I don't tell you these things to traumatize you, sweetheart, just to offer you a little perspective on what's really worth getting torn up over!"

Marian let out a breath and loosened her grip on his hand a little, tenderly stroking his palm with her fingers. "You're right, I know. Seeing you fall down into that stream felt like the worst thing in the world in that moment – I don't know, I was so certain that you'd be angry with me, that I'd ruined everything, that I was just waiting for it to happen, even after you'd told me otherwise." She glanced up at him with a hint of a coy smile. "A lot like you still expect me to reject you because of what you were in the past, hm, no matter how many times I tell you that I love you and trust you and forgive you – no questions asked?"

"Point taken," Harold responded softly.

"And... I didn't mean to upset you, either. Harold, with what I said. I've changed now, too, and I don't want to go back to worrying about every little thing that people say. I had a taste of that last month with the fiasco about Mrs. Appleton, and I can't stand living that way. As long as you're not upset, that's all that matters."

"I told you I'm not upset. The way you reacted, one might have thought that your actions had led me to take a tumble off a steep cliff and break both my legs!"

He watched in amusement as her eyes grew enormous at the thought. "That – that didn't ever happen to you, _did_ it?" she asked in restrained horror.

"Not that one, no," he assured her with a laugh, pressing his lips softly to her temple. "Merely a hypothetical predicament... but clearly I need to learn how to shut my mouth, sometimes!"

She instantly smiled in relief. "Oh, thank goodness. So... you truly don't blame me?"

Though he'd been certain that he would have succeeded in reassuring her by now, Marian's continued self-doubt did not surprise him in the least, so Harold did his best to maintain his patience. "Not at all. If it can be blamed on anything, it was the rock that I tripped over, but I can't regret the lovely time we had today leading up to that minor mishap. Promise me you won't let this stop you from behaving just as you might like, if the mood strikes you?"

His wife breathed in deeply and gazed at their verdant surroundings, as if trying to remind herself of why she'd felt so jubilant earlier, and it seemed to be working. "I won't. I don't want to give up that feeling."

"That's fortunate. I wouldn't want this to be the first and last time that I got to witness River City's one and only fairy-librarian..."

Her good humor returning, Marian giggled at the strange image he'd conjured up for her. "The one who keeps the fairy books, I presume? And what are those like?"

"Very small, I'm sure. You read them with a magnifying glass."

"Harold, you are ridiculous," she laughed, shoving against his shoulder so he lost his balance.

Swiftly catching himself on his other arm, Harold pointed a triumphant finger in the air. "Then I've succeeded! You had such fun being 'ridiculous' earlier, you see, so I was trying to recapture the mood."

"An excellent plan." She leaned back on her arm a little, as if trying to prove to him that she had relaxed about the whole thing. Harold could tell that she was still worrying, however, and mere seconds later, she turned toward him in concern again, asking him, "Are you terribly uncomfortable, though?"

The music professor hurriedly searched for a response that would not further discourage his preoccupied wife – he was almost dizzy from trying to follow her changing moods today. "There's not a cloud in the sky, so I'm hoping the sun will do its work in short order," he told her, ignoring the fact that they had deliberately chosen this picnic spot because it was shady and relatively enclosed. The alcove was gloriously dappled with patches of sun shining through leaves, adding to its ethereal loveliness, but it wasn't exactly the kind of sunlight that would dry his clothes quickly.

Marian had clearly seen right through his avoidance of the question, and she frowned sympathetically. "Wet clothes are just awful, though. You shouldn't have to sit around soaked to the skin like that... and though the sun should eventually dry your outer garments, it could take hours for all your clothes to dry." She sighed in resignation. "If we could just get you home, even to the music emporium, you could change them, but I don't see _how_ we could avoid anybody seeing us and raising an awful fuss. I just don't know what we can do other than wait, and wait." Helplessly, she wrung out his brown bowtie a few times, the most effective action she could take in the face of so much water.

On a subconscious level, his wife's lament about the unpleasantness of wet clothes had made him even more acutely aware of the terrible, heavy clamminess of his clothing, and he found it difficult to bear. Fidgeting in discomfort, he unfastened some of the top buttons of his shirt so he could more easily pull the damp material away from his skin. As he did so, Marian's eyebrows raised in startled alarm – although Harold couldn't help but notice, with no small measure of self-satisfaction, that she was unable to hide her frank interest in his revealed chest.

"Don't worry, I'm not planning on making a spectacle of public indecency... not that we're exactly in public, all the way out here. I'm just seeing if I can get a little more comfortable, although doing so while keeping reasonably covered doesn't seem like much of a possibility. If anything, my trousers and drawers are the worst, and there really isn't any way I can get away with taking those off..."

"Unless you intend to take off all your clothes and wrap up in the picnic blanket until you dry," she laughed, a charming blush rapidly coloring her cheeks as she realized how suggestively her innocent remark had come across.

"I'd be careful with making suggestions like that, my dear little librarian," Harold told her with a smirk. "You know I'm never averse to the idea of taking off all my clothes. But, you know, I've got an even better idea – why don't I take off all my clothes and _yours,_ and we can snuggle up in that picnic blanket _together_..."

It had only been intended as a joke, the inevitable response to that too-easy volley she'd just lobbed his way, but a rush of arousal ran through him as he contemplated that situation, and suddenly all he could think of was having her soft feminine body pressed up close against him, his hands exploring her luscious curves while she sighed and moaned and reciprocated with her own skillful caresses... It was not something that would be too wise to dwell on, given that it would probably be a good while before he could bring those fantasies into reality. They were many miles from home, after all, and the prospect of waiting for his clothes to dry meant that they might not be able to head back to town for hours.

At the very least, he expected to have his unruly lusts tempered a little when Marian inevitably spurned his advances in scandalized mortification, but to his complete shock, she did not instantly rebuff him with a witty and scolding remark. Instead, she seemed outright flustered, her breath catching in her throat a little.

"We couldn't do that, Harold," she told him, her voice faltering a little. "You know we couldn't."

If she had seemed genuinely dismayed by this, Harold would have backed off immediately, but her refusal was halfhearted, disappointed – it was as if she was waiting for him to talk her out of it, and, against all his better judgment, he rather wanted to do so. He certainly knew that he was capable of it, especially because she seemed so little inclined to resist.

 _She said couldn't, not shouldn't_... _I can work with 'couldn't',_ the scheming part of his brain worked out immediately – and then he was instantly disturbed by the fact that he'd even had this thought.

The one thing that he had never wanted to do in their marriage was to coerce her – seduce her, absolutely, but coercion was something entirely different. His caution in this arena meant that, despite his eagerness to introduce his wife to all the wonderful delights of the bedroom, he never did any new thing with her before clarifying several times that it was truly something she desired – which had, on a couple of occasions, actually made her a little irritated with his apparent distrust of her judgment. But it wasn't that he didn't trust Marian's ability to make her own decisions. It was just that ever since he'd been a teenager, he had been perfecting that ignoble masculine art of using his eyes, his voice, his smile to smooth away reluctance, to push aside well-founded apprehensions, to draw out enthusiasm where there was only hesitation... skills that had served him very well over the last several decades and that now made him vaguely ill to contemplate. One of his greatest fears with Marian was that, in a moment of heated passion, he might fall back into that old pattern and convince her to do something that she would regret, and it was something that he tried vigilantly to avoid.

Still, as angry as he was with himself for thinking so callously, Marian couldn't have possibly known what he'd thought, so he first set about correcting what he'd actually said.

"I'm sorry, darling, I didn't mean to say anything to make you uncomfortable –"

But she quickly silenced him with an urgent kiss before placing the tips of her fingers to his lips to prevent him from arguing further. "I'm not uncomfortable. I'm thinking."

"About?" he murmured.

Her brow furrowed a little, and she closed her eyes briefly. "About _why_ I'm not uncomfortable, I suppose. I _should_ be... it would be safer if I were." It seemed as though time might have stopped as her words sank into Harold's mind, and he was caught between feeling thrilled by her adventurous impulses and feeling terribly apprehensive that he still might be at risk of coercing her.

"I wouldn't want you to feel uncomfortable," he assured her, though he was still not sure that she even wanted this sort of assurance. He could see the internal struggle in her eyes, and felt that it might be best for him to remain silent and let her talk, given the circumstances.

"I've thought about this," Marian confessed with a shaky sigh. "I've thought about what it would be like for us to be – together – outdoors." There were few things that excited him more than when she revealed to him the passionate desires that mirrored his own, the fantasies that it seemed her innocent mind shouldn't be capable of, and Harold felt his heart slamming in his chest at her confession.

"You weren't thinking that when we first came here today?" he asked incredulously – while Marian was not averse to seductive schemes, he found it hard to believe that she'd want to be the driving force behind taking their lovemaking out of the confines of four walls for the first time. After all, she'd been embarrassed just to reveal to him her desire to wade in the stream!

"No, heavens no! But I am now. And maybe because I don't feel like being a lady right now, maybe because nothing today has gone according to plan, but I know it would be just wonderful."

"Oh, you don't need to convince me, sweetheart," he murmured, his voice low and ardent. "I've wanted you everywhere and every way since the moment I first saw you."

Her reactions to his bold declaration were unmistakably erotic, her fingers curling at her sides, breath quickening and heat rising visibly behind her cheeks and eyes, and he felt powerless to do anything but to pull her in for a long, delicious kiss – although he was careful not to crush her against him as fiercely as he desired to, lest he render her clothing just as unpleasantly water-logged as his own. Her unreserved willingness shocked him –scared him, in a way, as he had been rather counting on her resistance to prevent him from taking things too far. Not, as they had agreed, that there was any particular reason that they shouldn't or couldn't make love out here, but Harold was aware that to do such a thing completely on a whim, without any plan for the possible complications, would not be the smartest idea. This picnic had already led to a sufficient amount of clothing-related mishaps, after all, even without casting any of their garments aside.

But it seemed like it would be easy, so very easy, to yield to that temptation and transform this pleasant May afternoon into one of pure ecstasy – just a few layers of fabric were preventing them from taking this encounter a lot further, and would it really do so much harm to just take them away? It really couldn't be good for his skin to keep these wet clothes on, anyway.

If he were thinking realistically, though, he had to acknowledge that taking them off would do nothing to improve their messy and wrinkled condition, and, as much as the prospect of an open-air romp with his beautiful wife thrilled him, Harold absolutely refused to take her back into town in a state that would raise the slightest suspicion of such activities. He could think of several things that they could do in order to engage in such a tryst while maintaining their dignity and appearance, but they were equipped for precisely none of these at the moment. Whatever happened, the professor resolved that he simply could not allow this encounter to reach its logical conclusion today, or he'd be breaking his all-important promise to always honor and protect his beloved librarian.

Harold laughed a little as they broke apart, trying to lighten the mood to avert the very real possibility of abandoning reason and giving himself over to that ever-present all-consuming desire for _her_.

"Well, that's one way to get my clothes dry – to heat me up and steam the water out," he teased, his lips pressed against her neck because he still lacked the willpower to break away entirely. He nearly had to bite his tongue to keep from making a joke about how the continuance of such activities might, for her, result in a much different kind of wetness – that might be crossing one line too far, he suspected, especially as his intent was to de-escalate this situation.

Then he felt her bare leg brush against his and remembered all too vividly that neither one of them was wearing shoes or stockings, and, without thinking about what he was doing, he slipped a hand gently along her calf, causing her to shiver slightly.

"I suppose we should stop," he sighed, while making no move whatsoever to do so – in fact, he slid his hand higher up until he reached the lacy hem of her drawers just above her knee.

"He says, with his hand up my skirt," she retorted in an amused whisper.

"Shall I remove it?"

"No need."

Now her motions were deliberate, tickling and teasing his bare leg with her toes, and he couldn't help but laugh, even as a powerful pang of desire made him shudder slightly. As much as he enjoyed seeing his wife in her innocent, unconscious sensuality, like earlier when she'd been running in the stream, there was such an undeniable allure to her enticing him knowingly. It was incredible to see how far she'd come in only five months as his wife, really. Maybe in a certain sense, she was still quite inexperienced, yet within their first _week_ of marriage he had already made love to her more times than with any other woman he'd ever been with. In terms of making love with _him_ , she was far and away the most experienced woman in the world, a true expert, as was he for her. Harold liked that thought very much.

But he still couldn't read her mind, and he searched frantically for the right, carefully-worded question that could ease his worries.

"Marian, you're not just feeling this way because you want to make up for what happened earlier, are you?"

"Is it so hard to believe that I just want to enjoy being here with you?" she asked with a shy smile. her fingers running gently through the hair on the back of his neck. "I think that as we've been here for nearly two hours and not a single person has interrupted us – I can trust that we truly are alone and may conduct ourselves however we wish. And when we're alone together – oh, not even alone, just _together_ – there's always some part of my mind that's aware of how much I want you."

Harold wasn't sure that he could answer that statement with anything less than a full-on demonstration of his amorous feelings – because of _course_ he felt the exact same way, of course he was driven to distraction several times a day at the thought of the next time he could be with her in bed (or maybe on a sofa or a desk or pressed against a wall or anywhere else she'd allow it), and he'd always wondered if it didn't make him a bit of a cad to be having these thoughts in the middle of the most innocent activities – but knowing that _she_ might be thinking that way as well was too much.

He drew in a deep, ragged breath. There was simply no way that he was going to win this battle against his desires, not now. "Marian..." he started haltingly, but he found himself unable to force out any other words.

But in that moment, his dear little librarian wasn't asking for any; she merely leaned into him, no longer caring in the least that his wet clothes were touching her own, her upturned face flushed with unabashed womanly desire, and breathed the most tantalizing words from her full crimson lips: "Please, Harold, just kiss me."

There was no strength left in him to resist that delectable invitation, and he pulled her flush against his chest and covered her lips with his own, all the concerns of his conscience quickly fleeing his mind as he luxuriated in their renewed embrace. Although moments ago her demeanor had been all surrender, it was difficult to say who was leading and who was following. His passionate wife matched each of his impulses with equal fervor, their tongues and later their hips finding each other at the same moment, all as naturally as if they had planned it.

Then Marian startled him once again when, just as their embrace grew a little more heated, she tugged firmly on the lapels of his shirt, urging him down until they were lying on the blanket together. He broke their kiss and pulled back for a second, needing to see her, but he had barely a moment to take in the pleased expression on her beautiful face before she wrapped her arms around him still more tightly and pulled his body right back to hers, leaving no doubt about what she really wanted.

As the minutes passed slowly in perfect bliss, hands trailing languidly along each other's bodies while their mouths moved together, Harold wanted nothing more than to caress his wife's bare skin instead of merely perceiving her luscious warmth through the fabric of her clothes. Yet despite all the enthusiasm she had shown him, he remained cautious. It was a confusing situation that he'd never really faced before, he thought – while he had, many times during their courtship, successfully resisted the temptation to push a situation further no matter how badly he had wanted to do so, he and Marian were certainly not a courting couple anymore, and there was no need to worry about protecting her virtue or overstepping any boundaries. And, while he was determined that he could not allow them to go too far under these circumstances, that hardly meant that they had to keep things _completely_ chaste. Testing her response, he ran his fingertips along her neckline, and, when she unhesitatingly sighed her approval, Harold gave himself permission to make their canoodling into something just a little bit heavier.

As he undid just a few of the pearlescent buttons on her pink blouse to reveal the very tops of her breasts above her corset, he sternly resolved that he would undress her no further than that – but he didn't stop himself from burying his face in that revealed décolletage, breathing in her glorious soap-and-flowers scent and making her gasp and tremble with his kisses, twist in his arms and press closer...

 _But no more_ , he reminded himself. Still, his hand was already resting on her thigh, and if he just slid it a few more inches, not to _really_ do anything, not even to go beneath her drawers, but just to feel if she was aroused as he was, as he thought she must have been – well, that wouldn't be doing any harm.

So he did just that, spurred on by the motions of her own soft hands as they unbuttoned his damp shirt and pressed against his bare chest. Following the line of her leg all the way up, proceeding just a little too slowly so as to entice her exquisite pleading whimpers, Harold cupped her with his palm through her drawers, and found just what he was looking for, wet heat evident even through the layer of fabric – just that small contact was enough to drive her wild for more, and she pressed back against him with her hips and her entire body, breathing his name in his ear, fingers tangled in his hair.

 _No further than this_ , the voice in the back of his mind demanded, but it seemed almost a formality at this point, words that he heard but barely understood. He couldn't even remember why he had set this restriction in the first place. Hell, they were married, had been for nearly six months, and Marian had made it very clear that she wanted this, so what was the problem? And he was close, so very close, to being able to touch her in the way that they were both dying for, and one of her hands was already trailing down his stomach as well...

What finally snapped him back to his senses was, ironically, the very thing that should have made him lose his mind entirely – Marian, now desperate for his touch, wrapped her leg eagerly around his hip, and he again took in the sight of that same sweet, bare leg that had intoxicated him so to begin with. The sight of a blade of grass clinging to her smooth white skin suddenly brought his attention to those other uncharacteristic imperfections of her appearance... the hem of her skirt still hanging heavy with water (even if he _had_ pushed it up somewhere around her hips), tendrils of her hair falling every which way out of her intricate hairdo, the slightest hints of grass stains on her feet.. and her state couldn't have been even half as disheveled as his own. The picnic blanket, which he had half-teasingly suggested that they use to keep any amorous activity tidy and discreet, was useless for such purposes after it had been employed to help soak up the water in his drenched clothes – even if he stripped entirely naked, that blanket would do nothing now to keep either of them dry. And, really, had he really been about to caress her so intimately with hands that had been flat on the riverbed not half an hour before?

Disentangling himself from their embrace perhaps a little too abruptly, knowing that anything less than a clean break would send him right back into her arms in an instant, he pulled her skirt back down and smoothed it, his breathing labored. He could feel his pulse pounding in several parts of his body, and he felt that a second dunk in the stream might serve him well right now, but somehow he worked up the will to say, "Marian, darling, I'm sorry. We need to stop."

The librarian stared back at him in stunned disbelief, kiss-swollen lips slightly parted and desire-darkened eyes still blazing with ardor, and Harold pushed back the absurd sense of pride that he felt in knowing that she'd wanted him _that_ badly – it was really not the time to be focused on such things. As glorious as it would have been to engage in such a delight spontaneously, Harold knew a plan that wouldn't work when he encountered one. He hated having to disappoint her when she had been so daringly forward (and he certainly wasn't enthusiastic about having to disappoint himself, either), as that was the kind of confident behavior for which he wanted to show his unequivocal support and approval, lest she fall back into doubting herself. He figured that it would be best to simply explain his reasoning to her as clearly as possible so she would be less likely to interpret it as a rejection. However, he didn't get the chance.

"No, we don't!" Marian exclaimed in frustration, and then shrank back a little, looking shocked at her own outburst. "I mean, not on my account, I hope, here when you just said that I should feel free to flout the rules when the moment strikes. When I said yes, I meant it!"

He'd suspected that he might get such a response, and rushed to reassure her that he was not questioning her decision. "I know you did, but it's not that – I've realized that this isn't quite practical –"

"But isn't that why it's exciting?" she protested, her hands finding their way to his lapels once more.

He gently covered her hands with his own before she could get too far. "Darling, I don't mean it in the way you think. We've already made such a mess of ourselves – by no fault of yours – and I don't think it'd be wise to risk anymore, or to engage in such activities when we're not exactly clean. Or, at least, _I'm_ not. I think our priority right now should be going home and getting washed up."

"So you really don't – want to?" she asked, abashed to the point where she was having a difficult time finding the words to speak. "You said you did." Her eyes fell, almost accusingly, to the conspicuous bulge at the front of his trousers that had been pressed firmly against her mere moments before, and Harold rushed to fold his suit coat in his lap, for the first and only time in their married life not wishing to provide such a flagrant display.

"Of _course_ I want this, Marian," he stated vehemently. "I want to do this so badly that I don't know how I'm managing to sit here talking to you like this instead of making love to you right now, but I know it would be a mistake to go through with it. It's unfortunate enough that we've already ruined our clothes with water, and the last thing we need is to bring grass and dirt into the equation! I'd make love to you anywhere and everywhere, but the one thing that I will not do is make you look indecent. You deserve better than a frantic tumble on the ground like this, sweetheart."

Harold watched her reaction carefully, hoping that he'd been able to convince her without offending her in any way – and then her eyes fell on those same grass stains that had so alarmed him a minute before, her fingers plucked disapprovingly at her sodden skirt hem, and all at once she seemed to understand completely.

"All – all right. Yes, you're right," Marian answered with a blush, scrambling for the stockings that she'd carelessly tossed aside and rolling them back up her legs. "It's lucky for us that you were thinking clearly enough – despite, um, everything – to realize that." Although she was clearly as chagrined as he was that they'd had to cut things so excruciatingly short, he could see affection softening her expression as well. "And if realizing that was enough to make you stop, however little you wanted to do so, then I'd venture to say that you are a certain kind of white knight, indeed."

Harold grinned at this dubious distinction. "A _certain_ kind – so, the kind who isn't above starting such outdoor shenanigans, but who knows when to put a stop to them?"

"That's the only kind I'd want nowadays," she answered, her eyes twinkling. As she refastened the buttons of her shirtwaist, she brushed ineffectually at the darkened spots of water that were still visible there and shook her head, which in turn caused a few more curls to spring loose from their pins. "Going back into town looking as frightful as this will be an adventure in itself!"

"You don't look frightful, though – _I_ look frightful," the music professor laughed, wincing a little as he shrugged back into his damp suit coat.

"At any other time, I'd say you were flattering me, but I'm not sure I can argue with that," his wife told him, a mischievous smile turning the corners of her lovely mouth.

With a hand pressed to his chest in mock affront, Harold shook his head defeatedly. "If a man can't count on his own wife to tell him he looks handsome, who will?"

"He could look in the mirror and tell himself, as he always does," Marian offered, stifling a giggle.

"Why, Madam Librarian, I do no such thing!"

"Please. When you've fixed your hair and your hat and your tie just right, you don't think I notice the way you _grin_ at yourself? Lucky for you, I find it quite endearing."

Donning his straw hat at a rakish angle – fortunately, his hair had remained mostly untouched by the water – Harold gave her that confident grin of which she'd spoken. "Well, how do I look now, darling? Presentable?"

"To the casual observer, I suppose, if the casual observer were not in a terribly observant mood." Before he could protest, Marian leaned up and kissed him lightly on the lips. "Still more handsome than any other man in the world, though."

As secure as he'd always been in his own attractiveness, Harold had to admit that such a compliment from Marian always gave him a rather foolish rush of joy. Even after almost a year of being in love, it still shocked him sometimes how utterly soft and sentimental this woman could make him, how she could instantly reduce him from glib smugness to boyish besottedness; he had no defenses from her, nor did he desire any.

"You're awfully sweet, dear," he replied simply, kissing her cheeks and the tip of her nose, and she sighed with delight, nestling her golden head against his shoulder. Little moments like that could leave him every bit as blissful as if he'd actually had the chance to make love to her – not that he didn't still intend to do just that as soon as it could be arranged. Truth be told, his clothes probably could have used a little more drying off before they risked going back out into public, but there was an unspoken charge between the two of them now that made getting home seem like an urgent necessity.

They passed the next few minutes of preparing to leave in comfortable, contented silence, but after they had folded up the blanket and began making their way back toward the road, Marian turned to him suddenly and spoke. "Well, I suppose since we have the motorcar –" she began, and Harold's mind, still racing through the tantalizing possibilities of how they might spend the rest of their afternoon, immediately interpreted the simple statement in a manner which he was quite sure that she had not intended.

Harold simply couldn't resist sharing a hint of the delicious image that had just come unbidden into his mind, and he shamelessly cut her off in mid-sentence. "Mm, we do have the motorcar, don't we? Now, _that_ could be fun..." He let his voice drop to a low rumble and his fingers wrap possessively around her wrist, leaving no room for doubt about his amorous imaginings.

Now his wife responded with that familiar shocked gasp that he'd been expecting earlier. "Harold, that belongs to the livery! You mean to say that you could just bring that back to Marcellus with a straight face after –"

"Just a little joke, my darling," he rushed to assure her, kissing her fingers gently before meeting her eyes with a devious grin on his face. " _Mostly_ a joke."

"At least we wouldn't have to worry about grass or dirt in the motorcar," Marian mused – and then promptly flushed scarlet when she realized what she had said. Eyes quickly widening in embarrassment, she pressed her fingers to her lips. "I didn't mean – that we should –"

"Oh, I like the way you think, though," he told her, grinning irrepressibly. "I'll have to add that to the list of places I intend to have you."

Marian blinked once, a little startled at his blunt carnality, but she quickly regained her footing, raising her eyebrows at him in flirtatious mischief. "Where else is on that list, Professor?"

"The list is one word, and the word is 'everywhere'," Harold proclaimed, making her blush even more fiercely, much to his satisfaction. "But if you want me to be more specific, I'd say that this lovely little alcove here has just earned itself a high-ranking spot – I think we'll have to plan another picnic _very_ soon, this time where neither one of us ends up swimming." He thought that it might be best to refrain from informing his wife that her library topped this imaginary list and always had... he didn't want to shock her _too_ much in one day!

The librarian broke into a pleased grin at the idea of that proposed outing. "We'll have to plan what to do so that both of us can look perfectly presentable heading back into town, of course."

"Yes – I promise we won't ever raise a hint of suspicion about however _wonderful_ of a time we've had out here. Unlike today," he joked with a gesture toward his clothes, "when we'll be lucky if less than ten people point and laugh at me before we make it home."

" _Well_ , as I was trying to say, because we do have the motorcar – for its _intended_ purpose, mind – we can at least get most of the way home without drawing too much attention to your clothes, as at least we won't have to walk all that far. I'm afraid it won't be the most comfortable trip home for you, however."

"I can get through it, I'm sure. I'll just have to get right out of these wet things as soon as we get home, and I'll be fine in no time." Drawing her close with an arm around her waist, he purred in her ear, "Especially if we continue on with what we've started out here."

Years and years spent scheming meant that Harold could always envision the best possible outcome for every less-than-ideal situation, and he was already planning how he could spin the afternoon to make it far superior to their thwarted outdoor tryst. Maybe a little delay could actually make things even more exciting, he thought optimistically. After all, there was always something immensely satisfying about finally making love to Marian after having been denied the opportunity for any period of time – especially if he could keep her all hot and bothered over it in the meantime. Hardly anything was quite so erotic to him as his usually-sensible Marian driven frantic with sheer, wanton need, and he doubted that it would be all that difficult to push her there, given how much pent-up desire she still carried from their unresolved embrace a few minutes ago.

"You may think that the rest of the day was ruined for us by my little dive, but the day's hardly half over. There's _plenty_ of time for us to redeem it. Neither one of us has anywhere we have to be, and within fifteen minutes, we could be home. We'll have to start with a bath, of course..."

"You mean together?" Marian asked, her hazel eyes dancing as she twirled an unruly lock of his dark hair around her finger.

He raised his eyebrows at her as though he could barely believe that she had to ask that question. "What fun would that be if it weren't?"

"Seems like we can't escape from water today, then," she noted wryly, although she couldn't hide the desire in her gaze.

"Hmm, but hot water's a lot better than cold."

"I can hardly argue with that." Marian shivered slightly as a breeze swept over them, and Harold was unfortunately reminded that it would not, in fact, be helpful to drape his coat over her shoulders. But they were just reaching the car, and he took the opportunity to back her up against it, one last chance to set the scene for their afternoon delight. If nothing else could warm his poor wife who was trapped in those chilly, damp clothes, Harold knew how to make sure that her thoughts would.

He wanted to fix an image in her mind, to make it so she wouldn't possibly be able to think about anything else, to put her through a sort of delicious torment so she'd be more than aching for him by the time they got home. Eager to watch her melt, he gave her the most seductively smoldering look he could manage while he told her exactly what was on his mind in that low voice that he knew she could never resist. "So, a hot bath to begin with, and then anything, positively anything that you can dream of and maybe a thing or two that you can't yet, we'll do it. At home, we have a great deal more options than whatever we could manage out here, anyway. We can take our sweet time – take _all_ of our clothes off, and kiss and touch each other _everywhere_ , make love over and over in every way that we could possibly want, perhaps take a break just for dinner and then do it all again... you'd like that, wouldn't you, my dear little librarian?"

"Yes, I – I would," she breathed, dazed and blushing, and he could tell from the catch in her breathing and the dreamy haze in her eyes that, in her mind, she was already there. He was tempted to delve even deeper into his descriptions, wanted to coax her with words that were strong enough that she'd be able to _feel_ it instead of just picturing, and it was only the practicality of remaining in a reasonably fit state to drive that kept him from doing so – he wasn't sure how much longer he could go on talking like that and still remain in possession of his wits. Harold may have considered himself a master of seduction, but he also knew that it took little more than a look from Marian to seduce him right back.

So, instead, he simply feigned more composure than he felt, so he could remain, for the time being, collected and in control. "I suspected as much. We'd better get going then," he told his wife with a cocky grin, taking her hand and pulling her along beside him through the trees and back toward the road. Already she was trembling a little at his touch – yes, it would be well worth the wait when he could finally take her in his arms after all this buildup.

Harold felt immensely grateful for the speed that the motorcar would afford them in getting home. They had a long, delightful afternoon ahead of them – and he didn't want to waste any time in getting started.


	2. Fantasies

The second time that Harold Hill found himself sitting in water that day was infinitely better than the first, he reflected. Having his beautiful wife in his arms in a tub of hot water was certainly a rare treat, and he couldn't begrudge the day's rather unlucky events knowing that they'd led them to such a delightful afternoon. Although, truth be told, they were both even more eager for the sorts of delights that would await them _after_ they'd finished the necessary business of getting clean, and their washing had been punctuated with a good deal of flirting, teasing and kissing – which had made it even more enjoyable for them both.

Idly watching the droplets trickle down her naked body, Harold was struck by how intimately water could touch a person, reacting to every slight contour and variation, changing itself and the skin it traveled over so they were no longer two separate things. _Like us_ , he mused with a smile, and when he followed the path of the water with his fingertips, it wasn't only out of his desire to touch her.

"Mmm," Marian murmured happily under her breath, leaning into his touch a little more. As she turned her head to gaze dreamily at him, though, she seemed rather startled by the thoughtful expression on his face. "Harold? Is something on your mind?

He tried helplessly to put his thoughts into words, feeling that his epiphany was suddenly not quite so brilliant now that he'd been asked to explain it. "The water," he admitted, dripping another handful of water down his beloved's arm. "How nothing can ever be quite so close to a person as water can – except for a person who truly loves them." He chuckled and shook his head before resting his chin against her hair. "I know it's a ridiculous thing to say. I must sound awfully pretentious to you. But it got me thinking about about how much I love being close to you. Not just _physically_ , I mean – but how I'm just so grateful that you let me into your life in every way, and that I got smart enough to let _you_ in as well." Nothing could tie up his silver tongue quite like trying to articulate his feelings for Marian, the professor thought – although his wife did not seem the least bit displeased by his ineloquence.

Instead, she sighed in contentment, reaching back over her shoulder to stroke his hand. "Harold, that's a lovely thing to say! I feel the same way, you know. I'd never imagined that this kind of closeness with another person was possible, and I'm grateful for it every single day." Despite the tender honesty of her response, however, it was mere moments before he could feel her shoulders tremble a little with silent laughter. "I must admit, though, I'd not have guessed that your mind had wandered to such lofty places while you were running your hands all over me..."

Harold knew that she was not wrong to be surprised, but he was too proud not to protest. "Now, Miss Marian, surely you don't think that my every action is motivated by carnal desire?"

"Oh, I know perfectly well that your _every_ action isn't, but when we're already naked in a bath together, it would not be unreasonable to expect you to be feeling a certain degree of – excitement." She laughed, playfully kicking her toes to peek out above the surface of the water. "I confess that I was – um, that I –"

Evidently either unwilling or unable to continue, Marian instead turned her body around to face him at once, a flash of inscrutable inspiration sparkling in her eyes as she pulled herself up to her knees. Harold attempted not to fixate too obviously on her breasts, which were glistening in the most delectable way due to the water; he did not quite succeed, and his wife's smile grew even more self-satisfied.

"You're going to smell like flowers, you know," she noted matter-of-factly as she ran her washcloth up and down her husband's arms, her fingers tracing intricate patterns through the soap bubbles that were left there.

Rather baffled by her inexplicable change of subject, Harold could only stare back at her. "I don't think it matters much. After all, I doubt that anybody will be close enough to me to smell what kind of soap I've used. Nobody except you, of course."

"But _you'll_ smell it," she said, her face lighting up with mischief. "You'll just be going about your day tomorrow, when all of a sudden you'll think 'why do I smell like roses?' and then you'll remember this moment... and you won't be able to think of a single thing else until you can come home and take me into your arms."

Even as she said it, Harold knew that it was true – and it frankly delighted him that she'd thought of such a plan. "Devious, naughty little thing," he admonished teasingly. "You'd like to see me tormented that much?"

In response, she made a show of rolling her eyes and wrinkling her nose. "It would only be my revenge for this afternoon. A taste of your own medicine, if you will. Do you have any idea what it was like riding home with all those thoughts in my mind – of what you had planned for us? Um, _still_ have planned, I might assume?"

He grinned wickedly at her, relishing the memory. "Well, I couldn't look at you too much while I was driving, of course, but it was obvious to me that you were having a good deal of trouble sitting still. The bumps in the road seemed to trouble you especially."

Turning away from him with a laughing gasp, she sank into the water a little, and with all her naked skin exposed Harold could tell even from behind that she was blushing. "Yes, well, that's exactly what you wanted, isn't it? That's why you purposely reduced me to a trembling mess before we even stepped foot in the motorcar?"

"Mm-hmm. It appears that the Think System has its... less musical applications, indeed. I'd say my experiment was a success."

From how closely he was holding her, he could feel her breath quickening and her pulse increase, and he hoped that those erotic thoughts were returning to her now. "You say that as if it were even necessary! It would have taken me far less than that to drive me wild, especially after how close we'd come to making love on our picnic."

"I know. I wanted to see you desperate," he murmured. "I wanted to see you so that all that mattered in the world to you was me making love to you."

She nodded, clutching his hand tightly as she spoke. "I understand – I like that, too. I mean, to see _you_ like that. But it almost still frightens me, the things that you can make me think of, even in public."

"Oh, I know, believe me," he murmured, casting his mind back over all the times that he'd been forced to conceal and control the arousal that resulted at the mere thought of her. He'd not had to deal with such potential embarrassment since he was a teenager... or such _distraction_ , either. "Some days when I'm alone in my office, my mind wanders to you – well, no, _every_ day my mind wanders to you, but some days it wanders in a much more amorous direction than others, and then..."

Her eyebrows raised provocatively as she gazed back over her shoulder at him. "Mm-hmm?'

Harold cleared his throat self-consciously, unsure if it would be wise to continue now that he'd considered things more carefully – but she looked so strikingly lovely that he couldn't refuse her curiosity, however questionable of a decision that might be. "Sometimes I fantasize that during a slow hour, while no one's around, you stop by my office to visit and – "

"And?"

He'd said bolder things to her before, and at this point he felt that he had to go ahead with it and hope that it didn't earn him a slap. "Well, there are several variations on the theme, but I've often thought of you walking in, giving me a fervent, passionate kiss and then – slipping down under my desk to, um, surprise me."

Eyes wide, she laughed helplessly, somewhere between scandalized and greatly amused. "I really should have guessed that it would be _that –_ there are few things that you enjoy more."

He grinned, a little more sheepishly than usual. "Well, it's the sort of thing that requires very little removal of clothing, so it'd be easy enough to get away with in the middle of a work day – and I'd reciprocate the gesture, of course, sit you up on my chair afterward and – "

"You've fantasized about this extensively, then? Goodness, how does your paperwork ever get finished?"

"No need to exaggerate, now. I did just remind you that I'm not motivated by desire alone – more often than not, I'm thinking about things like what I want to tell you about my day when I have the opportunity, or how I'd like to have you there just so I had someone to talk to. Besides – I'm sure that the librarian has had a few heated fantasies of her own about her handsome, charming husband while she works behind her desk all day, after all."

Surprisingly, Marian leaned forward and giggled softly before she kissed his lips, not at all the response that the music professor had been expecting to such an audacious remark. When she pulled back, she wore a wry, teasing smile, and Harold nearly held his breath in anticipation of what fantasy she might be about to divulge – but when she spoke, her words were focused on a quite different aspect of his statement. "It's occurred to me just now, darling, how lucky I am. You see, you must love me more than anyone else in the world loves _anybody_ – and the proof is that you love me more than you love yourself, yet certainly no other man loves himself so much."

Dumbstruck, Harold wasn't sure whether to laugh at her joke or be touched by her sentiment, and in his shock all he could do was to feign offense. "Why, that's blatant slander against my character, Madam Librarian! Half-true, the part about my love for you, but the rest is pure fabrication. Perhaps I'll reconsider my plans for what we'll be doing when we get out of this bathtub..."

"You won't," she responded almost before he'd finished speaking, her voice ringing with certainty – and as her hands slipped beneath the water to caress him in a very intimate area, a touch that made his back arch and his lips fall open, Harold did not care in the least to maintain his charade.

"No, I won't." There was a second half to that sentence – to the effect that he actually intended to bring those plans into reality _right now_ – but evidently, Marian could read it on his face more clearly than he ever could have said it, because she crushed her lips to his with a whimpering moan and leaned in to him, one hand continuing to stroke him below the water. Harold followed suit, finally allowing himself to touch her without restraint, and his hands glided over her wet skin, over her breasts and hips and backside and pressing her tightly to him. Now gasping with all the pent-up desire that they'd held back ever since the picnic, husband and wife embraced each other in near desperation, their sudden tumult of motion causing splashes and waves in the water.

Though they were caught up in a frenzy of sensual need and their actions seemed to be drawing them irresistibly close to making love, Harold knew that it wouldn't happen while they were still in the bathtub _–_ as erotic as it was to bathe together, they'd learned rather early on in their marriage that the fulfillment of such encounters was better carried out in more comfortable and less slippery spaces.

So, though it meant the temporary interruption of their activities, Marian did not resist when he pulled her to her feet, kicked the stopper from the drain, and helped her onto the small rug beside the bathtub. She shivered a little, standing wet in the open air of the washroom, and she clung against his side for warmth – and the feeling of her hardened nipples pressing against his arm and her hips brushing his erection made him want to forgo all further prelude and take her right then and there. For a brief moment Harold envisioned simply pressing her against the wall to make love to her, something that he'd always yearned to do, but he pushed the thought away for the time being, realizing that such an activity would be terribly ill-advised while they were dripping wet and standing on a tiled floor. _Later_ , he promised himself, and instead enfolded her in a soft towel that he grabbed from the rack, using the motion to pull her close to his chest so he could kiss her again and again, slipping his tongue between her eagerly parted lips. His fingers soon danced across her thighs to explore between them, teasing his fingertips through the soft curls and softer skin until he found that familiar, exquisitely sensitive area that he'd come so very close to when they'd canoodled during their outing. Marian's reaction to his touch was instantaneous, her body tensing and curling toward him and a panting whimper escaping her lips.

Unable to delay any longer after they'd both been teasing each other for so long, Harold swept her into his arms, figuring that the one towel would manage to be enough for both of them for the time being – while he figured that it was best that they didn't get in bed while entirely soaking wet, he couldn't have cared less about taking the time it would take to actually make sure they were dry, not when the possibility of making love to her was so tantalizingly close. It took only a few short strides to bring her from the washroom to the bedroom, and only a few more until he could lay her down on their plush green comforter – if they were going to make so little effort to dry off, it seemed unwise to turn back the covers right now, so they could at least have dry sheets later.

As the librarian leaned back so invitingly on their bed, looking up at him through those long lashes, he was captivated, as he always was, by how lucky he was to have such an extraordinarily stunning woman for his wife. If she'd been a fairy earlier, she was every inch a goddess now, a figure glorious enough to be carved in marble, but warmer and softer and all for him. He could have spent hours simply exploring her body, and he had done so several times before. It wasn't just the obvious parts that captured his attention, either – while there were certain areas of her anatomy that undeniably held much greater eroticism than others, he could still find something to adore in her ankle or her elbow, simply because it was Marian.

Her desire-darkened eyes swept hungrily over his body in return, and the way that her fevered gaze lingered on his arousal gave him a rush of foolish masculine pride. Although he was shamelessly smug about many things, Harold had never wanted to be the sort of loutish man who took pride in his own anatomy simply because it was there, knowing that it was his skill and not his natural endowment that mattered most anyway – but he thought it was reasonable to feel proud of the fact that _she_ liked it. As he considered that, he climbed to join his wife on the bed so hastily that he nearly stubbed his toe, but the pain wouldn't have mattered to him at that point anyway, so focused was he on the extremely pleasant situation at hand. He almost dove to reach her, and she giggled at his eagerness – but she wasn't laughing anymore when he brought his tongue to her breasts, all of her mirth swallowed up by her wordless moans of passion.

Harold wasn't sure if she was doing it consciously or not, whether it was because she knew how much he loved it or whether she was simply that frantic with lust, but almost the very moment that he had resumed his kisses, Marian had slipped a hand down her abdomen, between her own thighs, stroking and massaging the sensitive places there, making herself gasp and parting the slick folds for him to see... With a low groan in his throat, he had to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment just to process what he was seeing; the ache of his erection grew almost painful.

Yet as intensely as he needed to be inside her, Harold could not possibly resist the new craving that she had incited in him by this action – and he thought it might be in both of their best interests if he did not proceed to make love to her immediately anyway, as he was so worked up by now that he didn't trust himself not to climax as soon as he'd entered her. Sliding his body down hers, he gently pulled her hand aside and replaced it immediately with his mouth, loving her familiar, intimate taste and the throaty way in which she cried his name at the contact of his tongue. It didn't take long at all like this to push her to the very edge – her thighs trembled and shivered astride his head, her hands grasped fiercely at his hair, and her head lolled back onto the pillow as she seemed ready to shatter beneath his ministrations.

But when he pulled away at what was surely almost the last moment of her self-control, Marian raised her head and let out a strangled gasp of frustration. "Harold, _why – "_

As tempted as Harold was to meticulously kiss every single part of her and make sure that she knew exactly how beautiful she was, his desire was far too keen right now to delay the consummation of their tryst any longer. "I want you," he asserted, his voice sounding like a near growl to his own ears, all of his debonair grace escaping him in the face of such tremendous need.

Neither one of them possessed the willpower needed to draw things out to be sweet and slow – they'd both been too eager for this for too many hours now, and Harold was rather relieved to see that Marian was not at all alarmed by his less-than-gentle handling or his frank expression of lust. In fact, she was even more aroused to know that he wanted her too badly to wait, and the urgency of her caresses increased in tandem with his, at the same time pushing him and allowing herself to be pulled. When he slid back to sit against the pillows _–_ he'd decided to take her in the same position that he almost had in the bathtub _–_ he hardly had to guide her at all before she was kissing him breathlessly and straddling his lap just the way that he'd wanted her to.

But as he felt himself slip inside her unbearably tight wetness and the sensation caused him to shiver uncontrollably already, he felt that he owed it to his beloved to slow down. It was one thing to take things at a fast pace but quite another to risk leaving her unsatisfied – and though he was quite confident in his abilities to bring her release by other means while he waited for his full vigor to return, that didn't mean that he was willing to face the humiliation of finishing as soon as they started.

Grasping Marian's hips in an attempt to still her instinctive motions, Harold took in a deep, unsteady breath. "Darling, if we don't slow down, I – I might not last very long –"

A wicked gleam lit in her hazel eyes, and she squeezed her legs tightly around him, making him gasp raggedly in pleasure and shock. "I think I can keep up," she whispered heatedly in his ear, letting her hands slide down his naked back, and Harold shuddered even more as she began to bear down upon him and move in complete defiance of his warning, setting a vigorous pace in which he quickly joined her.

As much as it usually thrilled him to be in charge, to know that he could draw out all those exquisite moans and cries from his deceptively prim wife through his skillful actions alone, he couldn't deny that it was perhaps an even greater thrill to watch her take control, especially when she did it with such confidence. Making love to her while she straddled his lap afforded Harold the most wonderful opportunity to kiss both her breasts and her lips while they moved together, to run his hands through her long golden hair, to cup her backside and stroke her thighs. Still, he knew that he needed to restrain himself to ensure that she could enjoy their coupling to the fullest before he had no choice but to give in, and, as intense sensation coiled and tightened within him, he intermittently had to close his eyes and concentrate on his own breathing just to keep his release at bay.

But her brazen, domineering actions, in combination with her increasingly rapt cries, aroused him beyond belief, and he could do nothing but give into his desires. He'd always found the sounds that Marian made while he was inside her to be unbearably erotic _–_ the combination of witnessing her pleasure while experiencing his own was something he knew that he would never, ever get tired of. And it was his powerful desire to watch Marian find ecstasy in his embrace that kept him going long enough even though he was shivering with the effort of resisting release, _just_ long enough until her trembling and moaning reached a fever pitch and she tightened even more around him, pushing him over the threshold into unrestrained bliss as well, and then nothing mattered, nothing existed in the entire world but the two of them.

As the most incredible sensations coursed through them both, Harold held Marian close against his chest, elated to feel her heavy, uneven breathing, the heat and sweat of her body, and know that he'd been the one to cause these reactions. Although _she_ had been the one most responsible for the pleasure of this particular tryst, he had to admit, so maybe he oughtn't congratulate himself too much. It still made his head spin to contemplate how his innocent librarian had become capable of such boldness in the bedroom – he'd taught her plenty and helped her along, yes, but a passionate enthusiasm like _that_ couldn't ever be learned. There was such sensuality in practically everything she did, whether she intended it or not, so naturally, when it came to the act of lovemaking, she was completely in her element. (He wondered, in the back of his mind, if she'd agree with that sentiment or be scandalized instead.)

"Oh, God," he breathed against her damp neck as he tried to stir himself from his euphoric daze – despite his earlier contemplation that he might have been becoming more religious of late, it was difficult not to let one of those slip out around her once in a while, though thankfully she tended to be far too preoccupied to scold him in moments like this. When he finally lifted his head to look into her eyes, though, something about the teasing little smirk on his wife's face made Harold feel uncharacteristically insecure, and not over the words he'd just uttered.

"I'm sorry, love," he blurted hoarsely, not knowing what else to say. "That was – over a bit sooner than I'm proud of, I know."

Raising her eyebrows, Marian giggled as she smoothed the hair from his forehead. "Now why in the world would you be sorry? That was _wonderful_ – it was over just as quickly for me, if you couldn't tell."

"It's not the same thing for a woman," he maintained. "For you, it doesn't mean you have to stop... and I can tell that you're nowhere near ready to stop. I know _I'm_ not."

"Maybe, but you did promise me that you were going to make love to me 'over and over _'_ today, didn't you? And I haven't the slightest doubt in your ability to do exactly that." Underneath her pleasure-flushed complexion, Harold could see the evidence of a different sort of blush stealing across her cheeks. "Besides, you know that I did it on purpose – took control even after you warned me that I shouldn't, I mean."

Wishing to gain a little control back for himself, Harold rolled them over so she was sprawled beneath him, blonde locks fanning out around her. "And why was that?" he inquired.

"The very reason that you might have done the same thing to me, darling. You said you wouldn't be able to last if I did, and I wanted to _see_ that. I wanted to be the one to make you feel so good that you couldn't handle it – I love that I can do that to you." Now she was blushing even more, and she pressed the back of her hand to her cheek self-consciously with a dismissive shake of her head. "What a fool I am, to be blushing after the way I just behaved..."

"No, you know how much I love it when you blush." Cupping her cheek in his hand, he traced her soft ivory skin with his thumb, utterly enamored. "I can remember clearly the first time I really saw you blushing – that first day at the Candy Kitchen last July. And I remember that I had an impulse to just pull you close and kiss your cheeks all over and tell you how sweet you were. I wasn't accustomed to having such affectionate thoughts about a woman – I should have known right then that you affected me differently than anybody else in the world!"

Though she couldn't conceal the joy in her eyes, Marian raised a questioning eyebrow. "But even if you had done that, it still wouldn't have taken you long at all before you kissed my lips, I suspect."

He chuckled, as she'd hit right on the truth of where those fantasies had inevitably led. "You're right, of course. Even though I desired a few more innocent kisses as well, I couldn't have possibly resisted such an opportunity... nor would I have tried." He found it equally impossible to resist that same opportunity right then, and he leaned down to give her just the sort of deep, passionate, desperate kiss that he would have given her that very first time, if, by the point when he was finally able to kiss her, he'd not been so mindful of – and enchanted by – her complete innocence.

And, as his much more-experienced wife, Marian kissed him back ardently, eagerly molding her body to his and tangling her hands in his hair. By the time their lips parted, they were both gasping tremulously – and due to their extremely intimate proximity, they were both fully aware of how powerful each other's arousal had already become.

Sliding his fingers lightly up her arms, Harold drew her hands back to pin them over her head, making it clear that he intended to take the lead this time. It wasn't quite fair, after all, that she'd denied him the chance to savor _her_ pleasure – after all the time he'd had to envision it, he'd all but missed her climax for his own when she'd pushed him so far, so fast. Remembering how successful he had been earlier in teasing her with words, he wanted to see if he could whip her up into desperation again for their next round of lovemaking. She wanted him already, he knew that, but he wanted to watch her tremble in anticipation again, so it would be all the more satisfying to watch her writhe and moan beneath him.

"So, darling," he intoned in a smolderingly low voice that was carefully calculated to make her melt, "I think we're going to do this my way this time. 'My way' being that we're going to take a nice, long time – " he slipped his fingers painstakingly down her thighs, lifted up her legs from under the knees and wrapped them snugly up around his waist " – and we're going to see just how many times I can make you come."

Her breath caught in shock at his wickedly bold words and color flooded her face, yet there was only desire in her expression as she imagined what he was describing – that was one of his very favorite things to do, to tell her what he was going to do with her, to make her imagine the pleasure she would experience and then to give her even more. "Oh yes, please," Marian whispered ardently, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him even closer, kissing and touching every part of him she could reach. Even as she willingly surrendered herself to his control this time, there was nothing passive in her embrace, and she writhed beautifully against him, her every motion seducing him, inviting him, begging him to make love to her.

He remembered how, in the earliest days of their marriage, he had been so fearful that the rapacity of his carnal desires – which had grown surprisingly insatiable even by his standards, thanks to the powerful effects of being so deeply in love – would disgust or overwhelm her, and that his long-held dreams of spending hour upon hour in bed with her, making love in every way that he knew how, might not be such a realistic possibility, at least not for a very long time. Harold had been wonderfully surprised, though, when Marian took to the experience much in the same way that she had, at the start of their courtship, taken to kissing – in spite of how new it all still was to her, she delighted in their lovemaking and the giving and receiving of pleasure with the very same fervor that he did. Though it initially had taken a good deal of reassurance on his part to instill in his wife the confidence that her desire and behavior were neither immoral nor distasteful, she had never wavered in her enjoyment of their physical relationship or her eagerness to try whatever new experience that he wanted to share with her. Now, nearly six months married, the librarian was entirely free of those inklings of guilt and shame that had plagued her – though she still blushed furiously every time they made love or talked about it, which Harold adored. After all, he had fallen in love with a woman who blushed, and he wanted to make love to that blushing woman as well. As long as he knew that there was no shame in those pinkened cheeks, he found them to be one of the most charming sights in the world.

But it wasn't just her blushing that he loved to see – his Marian was an extraordinarily expressive and responsive woman in _all_ ways, most especially in the throes of passion. As he thrust into her once again, he observed her every reaction, her fingers clenching, back arching, toes curling, and mouth opening on an ecstatic gasp – all those delectable responses that he'd been too addled to concentrate on the last time but that he loved so very much. Yes, he thought as he began to make love to her, he was going to enjoy watching every single one of those as he brought her the sort of unimaginable pleasure that she deserved...

xxx

Lifting his head from his pillow, Harold opened his eyes slowly in confusion, unsure of what to make of the orange sunlight streaming through the bedroom windows. It didn't look like morning, unless they were experiencing some extremely odd weather today, but he wasn't sure what time other than morning would find him waking up in bed. He was immediately conscious of a pang of hunger lancing through his stomach, but he couldn't gauge which meal he should have eaten.

Then his eyes fell on the scattered clothing and hastily discarded bathrobes surrounding the bed, and a broad grin broke out on his face as memories of the afternoon rushed back into his mind. He tried to run mentally through the series of events since they'd arrived home from the picnic, and, as he catalogued exactly what they'd done, was seriously impressed even with his own stamina. No _wonder_ they'd fallen asleep in the middle of the day! So, he reasoned, it must be about dinnertime now – a deduction that was confirmed when he glanced at the clock on his bedside table.

Yet despite the discomfort of hunger (thirst, too, he realized in vague irritation) he couldn't bring himself to leave their bed when he became aware of the captivating presence at his side. Marian lay snuggled against him wearing only his flannel bathrobe – _his_ , now how had that happened? – with her honey blonde curls spilling all around her on the pillow and her full lips pursed into a small, sleeping smile. As much as he might like to have dinner, Harold couldn't rationalize the decision to leave her embrace. He'd had always thought that Marian looked positively delicious when she was at all disheveled, and knowing for a fact that her disarray was a direct result of their exuberant lovemaking made him savor the sight that much more.

Absentmindedly, his fingers tapped out the notes on her arm for a song that he'd recently been learning to play on the trumpet. It was a habit he'd picked up ever since he'd become a legitimate music man, his hands always moving restlessly in the pattern of some song or another; he'd learned to notice Marian doing it as well, and he'd often wonder what beautiful piano tunes were running through her mind as her fingers formed soundless chords against the cover of a book or the fabric of her skirt.

Harold had almost drifted back off to sleep from concentrating on the repetitive motions when his stomach protested again, and he realized that dinner would not be a negotiable issue. He wondered if he could manage to slip out of bed and have dinner waiting for her when she awakened. She deserved a break from working so hard all the time, he thought, especially on this day off. Of course, Harold's culinary range was not nearly as impressive as hers – he'd started cooking for himself for the first time in years when he'd moved into this house last September, whereas Marian had been cooking under her mother's watchful eye for a long time. He tried to think of what ingredients they had in the house that he could work with – and he didn't want to risk unsettling her stomach, either, as she'd been having the occasional trouble with nausea in the past week or so. Well, he wouldn't know what he could cook if he didn't go assess the situation in the kitchen, he figured...

Very gently unwinding her arms from his, the music professor rolled his wife over just a little so he could sit up on the edge of the bed. He stretched his arms and legs for a moment, and only then did he become fully conscious of the fact that he was still stark naked. And Marian, of course, was wearing his bathrobe. Just as he started to stand up to seek out some pajamas that he might wear, he felt his little librarian's fingers lacing with his to arrest his movement.

"Where are you going?" she murmured, her sweet voice heavy with slumber.

"Oh, you're up," he exclaimed lamely as he turned to look at her. "I was going to surprise you by making dinner, although the 'surprise' part seems to have gone out the window."

His wife giggled happily and pressed his hand to her lips. "How sweet of you."

Still in a sleepy haze, she sat up in bed, causing the too-large bathrobe to fall down around her shoulders, and she blushed as she knotted the fabric in her hand, pressing it to her chest. There was something amazingly charming to him about her maidenly instinct to preserve her modesty, even after five months of an intensely passionate marriage, and even after that afternoon they'd just had.

"We could make dinner together, though," she offered. "There's really no reason for you to wait on me today."

"Ah, but you wait on me so very often," Harold said with a laugh. "You make dinner nearly every night, so it's only fair for me to do it now. I don't want to be one of those men who just expects his wife to work for him all the time, you know."

"I'd feel like a pampered fool, lounging around in bed while you cooked all by yourself, and not even on my birthday or while I'm sick!"

"I can't say I don't feel a little guilty every night when I come home and get to read the paper in the parlor while you cook," he pointed out.

Still, Marian shook her head. "Harold, I can't let you cook, I just can't."

A different possible motive for her objections struck him quite suddenly, one that he'd not been considering at all before. "Is my cooking really that bad?" Harold asked, trying to sound nonchalant. While he was well aware that it wasn't exactly his strong suit, he was surprised to find that he was a little hurt at the idea that Marian didn't like it.

"I didn't say that!" the librarian exclaimed in alarm. "I've told you before that your cooking is good – do you think I lied to you?"

"I'd never accuse you of lying, dear. It just seemed like you were fighting back a little too hard against something as simple as dinner."

"I _told_ you the reason, though," she sighed. "I'd feel too guilty if you did that for me. It feels wrong not to make myself useful if I have the opportunity."

At least once or twice a month they had these wonderful days when their lack of obligations coincided perfectly and they could devote the entire day to each other, the way that they had on their honeymoon. Harold didn't know a lot about marriage other than what he'd been learning as he went, but he figured that it could only be a good thing for them to maintain little slices of that carefree, newlywed spirit, and it was always nice to be afforded an opportunity to make love all day, as opposed to sacrificing sleep at night. And even responsible-minded Marian could never find it in her heart to object to these days of decadence – she might toss out a joking comment or two about what a shame it was that they were wasting an opportunity to catch up on laundry or yard work or polishing the furniture, but in the end she was always more than willing to postpone such chores for another time.

But right now, it seemed that a chore was what Marian needed to make her feel all right about allowing him to cook for her. She had thankfully overcome her feelings of shame about desire and lovemaking, yes, but she'd probably never stop being ashamed of idleness. Thinking fast, Harold gently suggested that perhaps she might like to use the time while he was busy preparing dinner to assess the state of the clothes he'd been wearing during his unfortunate tumble into the river. After all, he knew that Marian was fine with doing nothing productive today, but he figured that she wouldn't want the events of today to create more work for her tomorrow.

As memories of the picnic flooded back to her mind, her eyebrows raised in concern, and Harold could already see the wheels turning in her head as she planned what she should do. "Oh, yes, I should get a start on getting your clothes washed, before they suffer any permanent damage," she exclaimed. "As I recall, we did away with our clothes with considerable speed, and I'm not even sure where they are..."

"I suspect my bowtie and coat are still somewhere around the front door," he offered helpfully.

"Yes, and I think you actually _threw_ your socks off, didn't you? And your trousers, where would _they_ be – " She stopped suddenly in midsentence and examined him thoughtfully, as if noticing him for the first time. "Why are you still naked, darling?"

Harold burst out laughing at that, falling back onto his pillow. "Marian, I must say, you wear that bathrobe much better than I ever could."

Purposely letting the front of the robe fall open a little bit, she leaned over him, smirking. "All the fancy lingerie you've given me, and what you've wanted to see me in all this time is a red flannel bathrobe?"

"My enjoyment of one is hardly exclusive to my enjoyment of the other," he protested. "As a matter of fact, I was going to suggest that when we come back up here after dinner, you slip into one of those lacy little numbers and we try out a thing or two from one of those naughty lovemaking manuals that we're hiding – from nobody – under the bed."

She flushed with desire immediately at the thought, and Harold was pleased to know that she approved of his plans. "I don't know where you get all your _energy_ , Professor, but I'm not complaining," she said with a tremulous smile.

In their current position, Harold couldn't resist pulling her in for a brief, tender kiss, although he was careful not to let it go too far, and he rolled over and stood up immediately afterward to remove himself from further temptation. Already his passion was stirring again – Marian claimed she didn't know from where he got his energy, didn't she know by now that the cause was was _her_? – and right now, he was trying his best to get them _out_ of the bedroom.

"Unfortunately, if we go downstairs for dinner, I'll have to wear _something._ " He picked up her neatly folded bathrobe off the chair a few feet away from the bed and held it out with a grin. "Trade?"

"Yes, but – hand me mine first. And don't look when I take it off!"

Turning away dutifully after he'd handed her the satiny lavender robe, Harold still couldn't help laughing at the absurdity of her command. "Don't tell me you feel embarrassed about being naked in front of me _now_ , darling!"

"Not _embarrassed_ – all right, you can look now – I'm just being practical. If you stood there and watched me slip that robe off, I _know_ you wouldn't be going downstairs to make dinner anymore."

"You're smart," he told her, running his hands over her curves and pulling her close. "Because, quite honestly, even _thinking_ about you slipping that robe off is enough to make me question if it's food that I'm really hungry for..."

"No, we need to have dinner," she laughed, quickly disentangling herself from his embrace so she could head to her vanity to fix her hair. "We've neglected all manner of things in the past months in favor of making love, but I daresay eating should remain a priority!"

As she examined herself in the mirror at her bedside vanity (the same mirror they'd used rather inventively a couple times during their afternoon of lovemaking, Harold recalled with satisfaction), the librarian seemed rather shocked by what she saw.

"Oh, I _do_ look frightful now," she laughed with a self-deprecating roll of her eyes as she ran her fingers through her tangled curls.

"Nonsense," Harold retorted, wrapping his arms around her from behind. "What you look like is a beautiful woman who's spent the last several hours rolling in the sheets with her lover, which happens to be exactly what you are."

Blushing with mingled pleasure and embarrassment, Marian quickly smoothed her hair out of the way and tied it back with a white ribbon that she'd plucked from her vanity. "You make it sound like it's so obvious! How I've worried before about that very thing – do you know how strangely mortified I felt the first time we left our hotel room the morning after our wedding? I was so, so very happy, but I wasn't quite sure _how_ one rejoins polite society after an experience of that sort."

Harold grinned, reminiscing fondly. "I had my suspicions... Your face was bright pink when the waiter came to take our order at breakfast."

"And you just kept grinning and winking, and that only made me think about it more," she admonished with a smile. "It was as if we had a wonderful secret – a beautiful, but terribly intimate, secret."

He pointed a triumphant finger right at her nose. "See, that's the dead giveaway. It's not that there are any merely physical signs to betray it, but the demeanor, all the blushing and smiling and laughter, _that's_ the unmistakable sign of a recently well-loved woman."

"Or man," Marian noted archly.

"Or man," he agreed. "Although, come to think of it, there are _certain_ physical markings that one must conceal, I suppose..." His fingers unapologetically traced the pale red love bites that he'd planted on her neck that afternoon; he knew that it was a tad primitive of him, but he enjoyed the sense of carnal possessiveness that came with having left such marks on her body.

Apparently, Marian felt something similar, because she tugged his sleeve down and, with a playful smirk, traced the imprints that her frantically grasping fingernails had left on his back during their lovemaking. " _Well-loved_ ," she teased, throwing his peculiar turn of phrase back at him.

"I concede to that label," he told her with a light kiss to her cheek. "You're quite adept at loving me, in all senses of the word."

Despite all of the teasing that they'd been engaging in, a sincere, sweet smile broke across her face. "I've always hoped that was the case," she confessed, her voice soft. "It makes me so happy so see _you_ happy – and that includes, um – when we're in bed, of course. I know I can't be much of a _lover_ , compared to you, but I still want to be."

He shook his head in disbelief – he knew that his wife had her share of insecurities, especially about their physical relationship, but her assessment was so wrong as to be absurd. "Oh, Marian," he sighed, stroking her hair. "Just the fact that you say that should be enough to make you realize that you already _are_. You know what I was thinking earlier today, in fact? I was thinking how nobody in the world could be capable of loving me as completely and selflessly as you do. You _know_ me, body and soul, and that makes you a perfect lover."

"I do my best." She laughed a little shyly at that, glancing down from his gaze.

Lifting her chin up with his fingers, Harold leaned down to meet her lips with his own. He held the kiss only briefly, needing to look into her eyes again as his heart tightened with love for the woman who had become his entire world, who had shown him that he could be worth something and had made him as indifferent to the beauty of all other women as he was to any man. "Just by being you, you're already perfect for me, Marian."

As both of their robes had fallen open a little, the simple act of drawing her close brought them into unexpectedly intimate proximity already, and the feeling of her soft breasts against his chest made his heart start to pound. Yet Harold felt a surprising sense of calm as their bare skin pressed together, a feeling of pure comfort and contentment, a desire to melt into her embrace and stay there forever. And maybe he could have gone on simply holding her like that for hours, but the rumbling of his stomach quickly ruined the poignancy of the moment as she broke away from him, laughing.

"You were eager to get started on dinner, weren't you? Now I know why," Marian said with a light giggle. "We'd best get on with it." As she took a few steps back to move toward the door, however, she almost tripped as her feet tangled in something, and the music professor instinctively caught her by the arm to keep her from falling.

Reaching down, the librarian pulled the offending item up to eye level – it was Harold's light blue dress shirt, which he'd carelessly tossed aside in his frenzy to join her in the bath. "Still a bit damp," she noted, frowning. "You'd be a wreck by now if we hadn't gotten you out of these clothes when we did."

"In more ways than one," Harold teased, delivering a light smack to her backside as he walked past her and out of the bedroom.

"Oh, you'll pay for that, Harold Hill!" Marian proclaimed as she bounded forward to join him, laughing as she chased him down the stairs.

xxx

Though they were already thinking of returning right to their bedroom after they'd finished washing the dishes, both Mr. and Mrs. Hill had to admit at least a hint of tiredness from their earlier activities, and they took things a bit slower this time. Besides, they were still uncovering the odd article of clothing here or there, and Marian had insisted that they should have that squared away before they resumed their flagrant abandonment of all real-world concerns.

Taking a few steps toward the front hall, Marian bent down in a way clearly intended to drive him wild as she picked up his abandoned bowtie from where they had tossed it, and the music professor had to suppress the urge to simply grab her and make her forget all about laundry.

"There it is! I think that's the last little piece that's eluded me," she announced as she walked over to deposit it on top of the pile of clothes she'd been making. "I'll just bring these down to the laundry room and then – " she gazed pointedly over her shoulder at him " – we can resume our earlier discussion about the removal of robes and such."

"I look forward to that very much," Harold responded, his heart already beginning to race with ardor and his mind running through the myriad enticing possibilities of what they might soon be doing.

While Marian was busy in the laundry room, he took the opportunity to make use of the washroom, and, much like she had earlier, he had to laugh at his own reflection in the mirror.

Running a hand over his hopelessly disheveled curls, Harold chuckled to himself. "You know, it's only been a few hours since we bathed, but we are most certainly going to need another bath before we can go to work tomorrow if we keep up at this pace! Although it'll have to be separate baths if we ever hope to actually leave the house."

"That will be fine by me... as long as I still get to ensure that you'll smell like flowers all day," she called down the hall with a triumphant ring in her voice.

"I'll wash with your soap tomorrow if you want me to, then. It won't be quite the same as you doing it for me, but the results will be the same." For in truth, the fragrance of Marian's bath soap combined with the heady aroma of their lovemaking had made the scent of that soap into a sort of aphrodisiac for him today, even moreso than that sensual act of bathing with her had – if he had to smell it on his own skin all day at work, he knew he wouldn't be able to think straight, which, of course, was his wife's intention. No matter how tired they were going to be tomorrow from all this, Harold suspected that they'd still be craving a repeat performance by evening.

The two of them arrived back in the parlor almost at the same moment, and Marian gave him a self-assured nod. "There. All of your clothes are ready to be washed tomorrow," she announced.

He took her hand in his own, pulling her by his side into the room and twirling her around playfully. "And with that, I'd say the consequences of my fall in the stream have all been taken care of – so there's no need for you to fret over it anymore, darling."

"I assured you many hours ago that I was done fretting over it! All I was fretting over _now_ was your clothing."

Harold shrugged. "Just making sure."

"Well, today has been _perfect_ ," the librarian sighed happily, standing up on her tiptoes to kiss him on the tip of his nose. "I think we more than made up for any little mishaps that might have taken place earlier..."

"No objections to our celebrations remaining so very private?" he asked, and though his tone was light, he truly wanted to make sure that she was still comfortable with everything. Maybe she'd prefer to just read or talk in the parlor for the rest of the night...

But Marian shook her head before he'd even finished the sentence, smiling brightly. "Just that it's a little difficult to figure out what to tell my mother when she asks how I spent my day off! You may think that I'm foolish for thinking that people can tell when we've been making love, but I assure you, _she_ can – and it amuses her so."

"Hm, well, I think the picnic should be a good enough cover story for today. Unless you'd like to add something else to the agenda, to preserve your fragile respectability? Maybe it wasn't fair of me to insist that we stay cooped up in the house on such a lovely day... I could always take you out to the Candy Kitchen for dessert," he teased, knowing that she would refuse and very happy that she would, too.

"Oh, no. For one thing, it would take about two hours before I could get myself looking fit to appear in public," she laughed, shaking her head. "And you know I'd _still_ worry that people would be able to _tell –_ but even putting that aside, I am _quite_ comfortable with our current plans for the evening."

"Yes, staying in will be much more fun," Harold proclaimed with a charming grin, and he pointedly pulled the curtains closed before turning back to her and allowing his voice to drop to a low, smoldering register. "Sweets have their appeal, but they can't give you even one-half the enjoyment that I'm going to give you."

At that, she rolled her eyes, leaning back against the wall with arms folded and shooting a challenging gaze at him. "Getting cocky, are we, Professor?"

Her question struck him as hopelessly amusing in a rather obscene sense, all things considered, and in the moment Harold simply couldn't resist taking advantage of her innocuous words, if only because he so loved to watch her blush. "Your phraseology intrigues me, Miss Marian," he crowed as he strolled across the room toward her. "Was it intentional, given the situation?"

Her reaction was as charming as he'd expected, her mouth dropping open in utter shock and hazel eyes widening tremendously, but he felt a twinge of guilt as she seemed almost ready to fall backward into the wall, catching herself at the last second before her elbow hit. " _What_ – I didn't – _really_ , Harold –"

The music professor already had a heartfelt apology on his lips, knowing that he'd gone too far. Marian certainly never would have used the sort of language that he was implying even when they were in the midst of lovemaking, never mind standing in their parlor – and even on the occasion that _he_ said such things, she could only manage to blush furiously in return. The last thing he wanted was to make her angry at him when all he'd been trying to do all day was make her happy...

But as shocked as she'd been at first, the librarian refused to be so easily thrown off-balance by his bawdy reply, and she stood up defiantly, hands planted on her hips. "Well, I think it's a bit arrogant that you failed to mention the enjoyment that _I_ could give to _you_. Have you forgotten so soon our little discussion about how I'm such a wonderful lover?"

"Not at _all_ ," he replied in earnest, taking a step closer until he could slip the sleeve of her bathrobe down her arm, tracing his way up in a path of open-mouthed kisses as he did so. "You're sweeter than a thousand hot-fudge sundaes, a million strawberry phosphates –"

"I think you've made your point!" Marian laughed, breathless and wriggling pleasantly beneath his increasingly heated caresses.

" – and every bit as delicious," he concluded, nibbling mischievously on her neck. "So I'd much prefer _this_ sort of dessert over anything they'd serve at any ice cream parlor in the world, my love."

As he slid the second sleeve down his wife's arm and tugged on the sash, her lavender robe pooled at her feet, leaving her completely and perfectly bare before him, and Marian returned the gesture at once, her hands spreading across the open expanse of his muscular chest as his own robe fell away. She watched him with avid eyes to see what he would do next, lips parted as she took in gasping, uneven breaths.

Harold had made love to her several times over that afternoon, and yet he was _still_ so hot for her now that he wanted nothing more than to pin her against the wall and have her right there, the same impulse that he'd had that day when they'd gotten out of their shared bath. And he'd promised himself "later" then, hadn't he? Well, "later" was right now, he decided as he swept her into his arms...

As he pressed her to the parlor wall, his dear little librarian gazed at him in near breathless anticipation, her face flushing with mingled shock and desire.

"I thought you wanted to go upstairs so – so we could look at that book and I could put on a nightgown – "

" _Later_ ," he assured her and himself, already positioning himself so the slightest motion of his hips could bring him deep inside of her. "I want you right here, right now, and there's nothing to get in our way this time." Then, just before it was too late, he stopped himself, realizing that he had not ascertained her comfort level, praying that he had not offended her with this daring, new expression of passion. "That is – as long as you – "

"Yes, yes," Marian gasped between deep, hungry kisses. "I want you, too, Harold – _please_."

The music professor's heart swelled with relief and joy at her enthusiastic assent and at the reminder that his beloved wife's passion was entirely equal to his own. "Then you have me," he promised, capturing her lips with his own as he entered her once more – and, free of worries and obligations, husband and wife let pleasure carry them away into the perfect evening of their perfect day.


End file.
